Turkish army is posing with ISIS after delivering weapons and ammunition. Until recently, Turkey and the West have had the same interests in tolerating and even promoting the IS.

german-foreign-policy.com (Oct. 8) – Western interventions and the expansionist interests of NATO ally Turkey are responsible for the dramatic situation in the northern Syrian city of Kobane. The conquest of the city appears immanent, in spite of the desperate defensive battle against the “Islamic State” (IS) terrorist organization that was still being waged on Tuesday evening. There are already countless casualties. Western interventions in the Middle East are ultimately responsible for strengthening the IS, which is on the verge of conquering Kobane. Iraqi Kurdish militia – unlike the Syrian Kurds combating IS – are getting support, also from the Bundeswehr, thanks to Turkey’s expansionist concepts. According to these concepts, which are being greeted with sympathy in the West, a “Kurdistan” state could be pried away from Iraq and linked to – or even integrated into – Turkey, in the hopes of weakening the area’s pro-Iranian forces and pit Sunni forces against Iran. These strategic macro plans, which are in Western interests, have led to the terrible situation in Kobane.

Imminent conquest

The desperate defensive battle was still being waged against the murderous advance of the “Islamic State” (IS) terrorist group Tuesday evening by Syrian Kurdish units in the Syrian border city Kobane. According to observers however, the resistance against IS’s encroachment hardly has a chance of success. The IS has succeeded in conquering areas of Kobane, and its militia is advancing toward the city’s centre. According to official figures, more than 400 people have already lost their lives in the fighting. Observers assume that the number of casualties could be much higher. Thousands of civilians are reported to still be residing in the city and there have been repeated warnings of possible massacres.

Western Interests

IS’s brutal aggression has once again shown the terrible consequences of the West’s Middle East policies. With the destruction of Iraq and the instigation of the Syrian civil war, the West has created the conditions for the rapid rise of the terrorist group. (german-foreign-policy.com reported.[1]) This aggression also clearly demonstrates the common as well as the conflicting interests within the Western Alliance. Whereas the Iraqi Kurdish forces, who are cooperating with Ankara, are receiving arms and training for combat against IS – particularly from the Bundeswehr – Syrian Kurdish forces are receiving no comparable aid in their defensive battle. This is because of Turkey’s strategic macro plans. According to these plans, which are being greeted with approval in the West, Ankara should refuse all assistance to the Syrian Kurds.

Turkish expansionist concepts

Neo-Ottoman Turkey: the possibility of the Iraqi and Syrian Kurdish areas becoming part of a restructured federal Turkey, in five to ten years

Kurdish man runs from Turkish water cnnon

In a series of analyses, Günter Seufert, an expert on Turkey at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), has analyzed the basis of Turkish strategic macro plans. According to these plans, the lynchpin of Ankara’s relations to the Kurdish-speaking forces of the entire region lies in Erbil. For years, the autonomous Kurdish regime headed by Masud Barzani, has been quite closely cooperating with Turkey – on a mutually profitable basis of Iraqi-Kurdish energy resources in exchange for Turkish industrial products. Ankara began developing comprehensive concepts for expansion, when Syria’s collapse set, de facto, also its Kurdish-speaking region free. In early 2013, Turkey’s Foreign Minister, at the time Ahmet Davutoglu – today’s Prime Minister – declared that “it is high time” to “re-evaluate the artificial borders” created in the Middle East in 1916. Circles closely associated with him were speaking explicitly in terms “of the possibility of the Iraqi and Syrian Kurdish areas becoming part of a comprehensively politically restructured federal Turkey, in five to ten years,” wrote the SWP in April 2013.[2] Ankara’s policy toward Syria is inseparable from this concept.

Against Iran

the dismemberment of Syria and Iraq will be at the expense of local pro-Iranian governments

Also important, in this context, are strategically motivated western pleas for a serious discussion of revisions of national borders throughout the region. A complete “revision” provides an opportunity of weakening Iran, because the dismemberment of Syria and Iraq will be at the expense of local pro-Iranian governments, thereby, by prying out a “Kurdistan” nation, opening the way for the creation of a “secular Sunni counterweight” to Shiite Teheran. In Washington, plans to this effect have recently been publicly under consideration. (german-foreign-policy.com reported.[3]) These plans conform, in many aspects, to Turkish concepts for expansion.

Against PKK and PYD

However, difficulties have arisen in Ankara’s planning. From Turkey’s perspective, it was indispensable to integrate the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party), which still is extremely influential in the Kurdish population. Therefore, in late 2012, Ankara initiated comprehensive talks with the PKK, with the objective of having it renounce on founding a Kurdish nation in exchange for a certain federalization of Turkey. As the SWP reported last spring, the talks were initially proceeding very successfully (german-foreign-policy.com reported.[4]), but became stalled over disagreements about how much federalization – or even Kurdish autonomy – should be included. Various tactical maneuvers have followed, with which Ankara has tried to weaken the rebellious PKK and, its close ally, the PYD (the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party) – the predominant force in northern Syria – in an effort to undermine the PKK’s position in the negotiations.

These maneuvers have included close cooperation with Erbil’s ruler, Masud Barzani, a long-time opponent of the PKK and the PYD, as well as “assistance initially to moderate Islamist and ultimately also to Salafist and jihadist groups in Syria,” which was “always aimed also at preventing Kurdish autonomy under PYD/PKK leadership in Syria,” according to SWP expert Seufert.[5] This was particularly beneficial to the IS terrorists. The West – in the hopes of speeding up Assad’s overthrow – had tolerated this. (german-foreign-policy.com reported[6]).

Diverging interests

Until recently, Turkey and the West have had the same interests in tolerating and even promoting the IS. However, since the IS began openly threatening western positions, these interests have been clearly diverging. The USA and the EU countries have begun to wage war on the terrorist group, but Ankara, so far, has remained aloof. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan explained, that “Turkey is against the ISIS (IS) terrorist organization, just as it is against the PKK terrorist organization.”[7] The population of Kobane, which has already suffered countless casualties and has to fear suffering even more, is the victim of this complex and contradictory network of Western interventions, projects of a new order and Turkish expansionist concepts. Kobane’s population will not be the last to suffer the consequences of external interference into the Middle East.

Other reports and background information on war on IS can be found here: Liberated by the West, From Kurdistan to Alawitestan and The End of an Epoch (I).

For your information: The Mosul vilayet

Under the Ottoman Empire, the Mosul vilayet stretched from Zakho in southeastern Anatolia down along the Tigris River through Dohuk, Arbil, Alqosh, Kirkuk, Tuz Khormato and Sulaimaniyah before butting up against the western slopes of the Zagros Mountains, which shape the border with Iran. This stretch of land, bridging the dry Arab steppes and the fertile mountain valleys in Iraqi Kurdistan, has been a locus of violence long before the Islamic State arrived. The area has been home to an evolving mix of Kurds, Arabs, Turkmen, Yazidis, Assyro-Chaldeans and Jews, while Turkish and Persian factions and the occasional Western power, whether operating under a flag or a corporate logo, continue to work in vain to eke out a demographic makeup that suits their interests.

At the time of the British negotiation with the Ottomans over the fate of the Mosul region, British officers touring the area wrote extensively about the ubiquity of the Turkish language, noting that “Turkish is spoken all along the high road in all localities of any importance.” This fact formed part of Turkey’s argument that the land should remain under Turkish sovereignty. Even after the 1923 signing of the Treaty of Lausanne, in which Turkey renounced its rights to Ottoman lands, the Turkish government still held out a claim to the Mosul region, fearful that the Brits would use Kurdish separatism to further weaken the Turkish state. Invoking the popular Wilsonian principle of self-determination, the Turkish government asserted to the League of Nations that most of the Kurds and Arabs inhabiting the area preferred to be part of Turkey anyway. The British countered by asserting that their interviews with locals revealed a prevailing preference to become part of the new British-ruled Kingdom of Iraq.

The Turks, in no shape to bargain with London and mired in a deep internal debate over whether Turkey should forego these lands and focus instead on the benefits of a downsized republic, lost the argument and were forced to renounce their claims to the Mosul territory in 1925. As far as the Brits and the French were concerned, the largely Kurdish territory would serve as a vital buffer space to prevent the Turks from eventually extending their reach from Asia Minor to territories in Mesopotamia, Syria and Armenia. But the fear of Turkish expansion was not the only factor informing the European strategy to keep northern Iraq out of Turkish hands.

…

On Oct. 14, 1927, the fate of Kirkuk was sealed: A gusher rising 43 meters (around 140 feet) erupted from the earth, dousing the surrounding land with some 95,000 barrels of crude oil for 10 days before the well could be capped. With oil now part of the equation, the political situation in Kirkuk became all the more flammable.

– Reva Bhalla, “Turkey, the Kurds and Iraq: The Prize and Peril of Kirkuk,” Stratfor